Ads in a Quality Score World

I’m in San Jose this week for the Search Engine Strategies conference…current session is called “Ads in a Quality Score World”, moderated by Danny Sullivan (standing in the photo)…and speakers including Andrew Goodman (He wrote the book on understanding Adwords and I recommend his guides) and Google, Yahoo, & MSN ad quality product managers.

My interest in this session is to better understand the current state of the market in terms of the major search engines are quality scoring ads… because our own future desire to rank members and articles by the quality of their landing pages (see these entries: Landing Page Quality Scoring, and this one: Landing Page Quality Follow Up Mini Podcast ) in an effort to ensure a positive & relevant user experience.

Here are my notes/thoughts:

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Posted by Christopher M. Knight on August 20, 2007 at 1:40 pm

Views 416 | Comments (5)

Article Categorization Tip - Generate Trust With Readership

The Issue: EzineArticles Expert Authors who specialize in something will often write about something else and then consciously or subconsciously they will categorize their article based on their expertise rather than what the best category should be for the article.

Example: An author who specializes in Soccer writes a general nutrition article and places it in the Soccer category even though there is nothing in the article title or body that mentions anything about soccer or how nutrition can be applied to the game of soccer…until we see the resource box is soccer focused. This is a trust violation with the reader.

The Solution: The category your article in is more about generating trust with the reader than generating traffic for your article. Violating trust with your readership is not a good way to drive demand and traffic back to your website.

Posted by Christopher M. Knight on August 20, 2007 at 8:54 am

Views 393 | Comments (8)

Long vs Short Article Lengths

Iran writes:

I have a 3500 word article that is under several subtitles for the sake of better clarity. Is a 3500 word article too long for marketing? Or should I break it down to a few smaller ones? But I personally feel that a good comprehensive and fresh article is fine to be that long. I personally would read a long article that tickles my interest. What do you think? Thanks!

Simple answer = Yes, it is too long.

Complex answer = Technically it’s within our limits (250 words to 5000 words) but I can guarantee that (7) articles that are 500 words will out perform (1) article that is 3,500 words in terms of the amount of traffic, exposure and interest you’re able to attract with the same volume of content.

Article quality is only ONE component of the success equation. Having a large quantity of articles in your inventory is also essential. Takes both. Hope this helps.

Posted by Christopher M. Knight on August 19, 2007 at 10:37 am

Views 574 | Comments (32)

Resource Box URLs and Deep Linking

Two important resource box tips today:

1) If your website address / URL is very long and multi-worded, then consider only running with the domain itself as your link (what the majority of authors do). Example: http://Your-Company-Name.com/

Reason: I’ve noticed too many authors with long multi-word domain names who then go on to list a very deep link in their resource box: (Example: http://Your-Company-Name.com/thisdirectory/thatdirectory/thispage.html etc..)

The problem with the deep link is that the URL itself is too long and will wrap or cut in half when sent by an ezine publisher to his or her plain text newsletter audience. Let me tell you…rarely will readers go through the trouble of copy and pasting 2 sections of a broken link to view your website.

2) If you are going to include a deep link in your resource box (ie: A link to a web page or sub-directory within your website instead of the home page), then be certain you have a missing.html or 404 redirect page setup so that you capture lost traffic.

Reason: I did a random test recently of (8) EzineArticles authors who included a deep link in their resource box to see if they had a 404 redirect setup to capture lost traffic. 87.5% of my informal test did not have a redirect setup and gave either an annoying 404 error from their web host provider or file not found. Dead end. Only 1 out of the 8 I tested had a refresh setup to capture lost traffic.

You work so hard to build traffic to your website…don’t lose your hard earned traffic by failing to have a 404 redirect setup. How to do this? Ask your webmaster or web hosting provider for help.

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Posted by Christopher M. Knight on August 17, 2007 at 9:45 am

Views 712 | Comments (9)

Resource Box Review Day

Here’s an offer to the first 10 that post a comment on this blog entry: FREE RESOURCE BOX REVIEWS/CRITIQUES

1) Participate by posting a comment to this blog entry.

2) Copy and paste the resource box of yours that you’d like me to critique.

3) Tell us a one sentence desired end-outcome that you want your resource box to achieve for you, your business, your website, whatever.

4) Have thick skin and know that I’m critiquing your resource box and not you personally — I care very much about helping you succeed with your article writing & marketing strategy.

5) Free Resource Box Critiques Offer ends when we reach the first 10 or midnight Thursday Aug 16th, whichever comes first.

This is the first time we’re doing something like this. It’s a test. There are over 800 members on the EzineArticles blog notify list that were notified of this limited time resource box critique offer. Who will be first?

Posted by Christopher M. Knight on August 15, 2007 at 11:28 pm

Views 1,420 | Comments (45)

Featured on EzineArticles- MySpace Style

Quite a few EzineArticles expert authors have put up the new (or the old) “Featured on EzineArticles” buttons linking to their expert author URL that I thought I’d show you a few implementations:

• Kathy Ostman-Magnusen
• Don L Price
• Fran Briggs
• Michael Sisler
• Danijela Zobundija
• Missy Golightly
• Simonne Paumard

Sorry if I missed you. If you have a “Featured on EzineArticles” button on your MySpace or Facebook profile, feel free to add a comment to this blog thread. If you’d like to add me/we @ EzineArticles as a friend, go here: http://www.myspace.com/ezinearticles

If you’re an EzineArticles expert author, you can find the above button and more along with custom HTML code that inserts your personal EzineArticles expert author URL in the code (helps your MySpace or website visitors to quickly find your articles) by logging into your Membership interface, click on AUTHOR RESOURCES, then FEATURED AUTHOR BANNERS. :-)

Posted by Christopher M. Knight on August 15, 2007 at 11:07 pm

Views 1,481 | Comments (17)

Resource Box Training - What To Exclude

In my article Article Marketing 101: The Perfect Author Resource Box - I covered essentially what to *INCLUDE* in your ideal RESOURCE BOX.

For newbies: Your resource box is located directly below your article body - Your article body is the GIVE; Your resource box is your TAKE (where you can pitch yourself, your business, your website and why your reader should do business with you).

Today, you’ll discover some of the items that *should never make it into your resource box* and why:

• Your email address - Do you really want to be spammed to death?
• Your phone number - Article syndication / marketing is timeless whereas your phone number may change from decade to decade.
• Your life’s story - No one cares.
• Your achievements, awards, medals, victories, successes, etc. - It may be ok to include a little about this, but focus on being BENEFIT-ORIENTED in your resource box copywriting. What’s in it for your reader to want to know more about you and your website?
• Every website you own - Most likely will dilute your credibility.
• Website links to sites you own that have nothing to do with the topic of your article - Instead, stay narrow in focus to help the reader know you are focused on your niche only.
• Affiliate links - Save this for other websites that accept that sort of thing. Sorry, EzineArticles does not.
• Links to your EzineArticles expert author URL - Don’t include this because we already append it automatically. You’d be amazed how many times our editors remove this manually.
• Extremely personal data such as your sex, marital status, physical stats, etc. - Does it really help you advance your credibility?
• Personal friend recommendations such as *see Chuck for this or that service or product as I endorse him* - Just bad form for this type of marketing.
• Repetitive anchored text links of the same keywords or key phrases - This is viewed as SEO abusive or keyword abuse.
• Extra Images - Your author photo will already be included in your resource box if you have it uploaded; otherwise, you’re welcome to upload your professional photo gallery on EzineArticles for other images you want to upload. Sorry, we don’t have plans to allow images to be included in articles this year.

The theme you should be noticing here: Purpose of the resource box is to build your credibility by staying narrow in your niche focus and being benefit oriented: ie: What’s in it for the reader if they click on your link(s) to learn more about what you can do for them?

Posted by Christopher M. Knight on August 14, 2007 at 1:17 pm

Views 1,544 | Comments (14)

Gloria Thomas Anderson - Author Spotlight

One thing I’ve noticed over the years is that professional speakers are almost always a perfect candidate to be an idea EzineArticles expert author. Motivational speaker & writer Gloria Thomas-Anderson is a great example of this.

What I liked about Gloria’s profile & articles:

Completed profile, including author photo & extended description/bio.

Gloria added her ISBN of her most recent works, Passion For Your Purpose: Discovering Peace, Direction and Balance in your life.

If you’ve followed this blog discussion, you know it’s hard to write a high quality authentic article under 500 words…but Gloria has mastered this.

If I was Gloria’s article writing/marketing coach: I’d recommend adding more vertical spaces between her numbered lists of items (within her articles); to be careful on article title character limits (and if you hit a limit, then change the title to fit the limit rather than cutting a word in half); to be careful on the vertical length of her resource box as it gives the appearance of a 50/50 ratio to content when a 15/85 ratio is an ideal target; and lastly, to be adding consistently to her article inventory each year.

This is the kind of author that our audience begs us for more. :)

Posted by Christopher M. Knight on August 13, 2007 at 11:49 am

Views 533 | Comments (6)

Ezine Marketing vs Article Marketing via Ezine Articles

Newbies are confused and I wanted to clear the air on something:

What our members do when they submit articles to EzineArticles.com has nothing to do with “Ezine Marketing.” We are not the ‘Ezine” nor is “Ezine” just a noun that we plucked out of the air as some believe. :-) Really.

Definitions:

Ezine = Email Newsletter

Ezine Publisher = Someone who publishes an email newsletter

Ezine Marketing = Creating, promoting, managing, & publishing an email newsletter.

Article Marketing = Creating quality original articles 250-1500 words that you make available for syndication by others, preferably by others who have niche websites or ezines that are related to your core area of expertise, with the hopes to attract traffic back to your website and generate demand for yourself/your business.

Ezine Articles = A matching service between expert authors looking to share their expertise in exchange for traffic back to their website thanks to ezine publishers who reprint their content without any changes - sent to their email list membership and/or added to their website.

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Posted by Christopher M. Knight on August 10, 2007 at 8:58 am

Views 740 | Comments (13)

Editorial Interpretations

Check out this interesting predicament (said with the same style that John Travolta said in the 1997 movie, Face Off):

The more we communicate with our members, the more they get mad at us for not being consistent.

1) Start with the premise that our article reviewers & quality control team members are not allowed to personally communicate with any members.

2) A year ago we had 17 templates that our editors could email notify a member when his or her article needed a quick adjustment to become approved.

3) Today, we have 31 problem article templates including the new capability to send one custom generated template email with up to 3 different problems listed at a time to be fixed.

4) The number of editors on our team has doubled over same time last year. Getting everyone on the same page including memorization of a few hundred guideline issues has been a real challenge.

There is some weird law at work here that states the more you communicate, the more consistent your members expect you to be…and perhaps rightfully so.
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Posted by Christopher M. Knight on August 9, 2007 at 10:47 am

Views 328 | Comments (9)

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